Thomas Paine's Common Sense

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the origins and evolution of an alliance which transformed the geopolitics of the classical world: the Delian League. Since the start of the 5th Century BCE, city states across Greece had been fighting a series of armed conflicts in the Greco-Persi ...  Show more

At the Hay Festival, Misha Glenny and guests discuss the impact of the Norman invasion on the people and land of Wales and across the modern border with England in what became known as The Welsh Marches, march being a term for a militarized borderland. Hay was one of the first Ma ...  Show more

Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense, the pamphlet that inspired the American Revolution. So why did only six people show up at his funeral? Mo finds out why this essential Founding Father has never gotten his due - and, with the help of a Tony nominated Broadway songwriting team and ...  Show more

On this episode of Our American Stories, Dr. Benjamin Rush is America’s Forgotten Founding Father; perhaps it’s because many historians don’t know what to do about his outspoken faith. Rush was the one who encouraged Thomas Paine to write “Common Sense,” which fueled the American ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of the eighteenth-century philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke.Born in Dublin, Burke began his career in London as a journalist and made his name with two works of philosophy before entering Parliament. There he quickly esta ...  Show more

January 10th: Thomas Paine Publishes “Common Sense”